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Post by Kapitan on May 18, 2019 13:57:17 GMT
I'm not interested in your footwear. But I am interested in when and how you first were exposed to bootlegs, as I was thinking how different it is now from when I first experienced them, which itself must be different from how previous generations did.
My freshman year of college, I was really into Led Zeppelin and Queen. Those were probably my two favorite bands, with the Beatles still right there and Zappa creeping in. But it was mostly Zeppelin and Queen, both of whose catalogs I had in full on cassette and was just then replacing on CD. (A friend of mine had taken to shoplifting for a few months in that year. I'm embarrassed to admit I placed orders with him and basically replaced those bands' plus the Beatles' catalogs, from cassette to CD, through his efforts.)
But once I had everything, then what? While there was Page & Plant, twice, right in those years, and while Queen's Made in Heaven and the BBC tracks disc were released right around then, there would (otherwise) be nothing new forthcoming.
Down the road from campus was a used music store in a strip mall. Disc-Go-Round, maybe? Something like that, something with a relatively small section for new music, a large section for used music, a section labeled "imports," and some glass cases with rarities.
Imports? I didn't recall any such thing in the malls I had access to as a high school kid. As I checked them out, I was briefly startled to realize that bands I liked had albums I'd never heard of! They were releasing albums overseas without telling anybody? What the...!? A Queen album including the the BBC songs, the pre-Queen band Smile's songs, and Freddie's Larry Lurex songs, too? Cool! An early Zeppelin show from the West Coast? Another from their final tour? These albums were amazing ... and expensive. The standard-length CDs were $25-30 instead of $10-15. That final-tour Zep was a triple disc (two concerts) package, and I think it was well over $50.
It dawned on me ... these were bootlegs! (I was a bit slow...) So I asked the guy at the counter if they had any specific bootlegs: 1970s live Queen, maybe? Anyway, he gives me the dirtiest look and says firmly, "imports." I must have replied stupidly, maybe saying I didn't care whether they were domestic or imported, I just wanted bootlegs. Whatever I said, I know it again included "bootlegs." And the guy says again, slowly and firmly, "we don't sell bootlegs. Imports." Ahhhhh! I get it! (Again, I was a bit slow.)
Eventually that guy was selling me not only these crappy-covered CD "imports," but even dubbed cassettes. No crappy cover at all, just a Memorex or Maxell or Sony with handwritten tracklists. I specifically remember a 1975 Zeppelin concert I got that way. It's one in which Plant asks "does anybody remember forests?" in the part of "Stairway" where, in The Song Remains The Same, he asks "does anybody remember laughter?" In another, he just asked "does anybody?" It became a hobby of mine noting variations in what he added in that part.
Anyway, that's how I got boots for a few years. Used music stores, always used. Sometimes I could place orders, but I never knew for sure if I'd actually get the thing I ordered. Then sometimes, sure enough, there's some CD or cassette at the end of the rainbow. All overpriced. Always overpriced.
A couple years later I started coming across similarly shitty CDs of Zappa shows ... bad covers, bad sound quality recordings of shows... "Beat the Boots."
And a couple years later, Napster. Everything got so much easier. It was slow waiting for downloads, and half of them weren't what they were labeled to be, but it was better than hunting through racks of used CDs or talking to shady guys in music stores. Now I could waste hours, days, hunting, downloading, listening.
Now of course, it's even more immediate. YouTube. Boom. Done.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on May 18, 2019 14:35:53 GMT
I can't really pinpoint the exact year, but in the mid-1970's I was reading a lot of different rock & roll magazines/publications, and there were several out there. Again, I don't remember the exact one, but I saw an ad in a magazine for "rare, live Doors' concerts". Needless to say I jumped on that! So, I started collecting Doors' bootlegs on vinyl and cassettes. I specifically remember getting The Matrix (1967), The Singer Bowl (1968), and Dallas (1970) which was one of the last concerts with Jim (1970). It really added a lot to my fandom. I also have a few shows from Ray Manzarek's short-lived solo career. I wonder if they are rare today?
In the early/mid 1980's - again from those same magazines - I saw an ad for The Beach Boys' SMiLE sessions. I remember it came in Vol. 1 and 2. I received two gray cassettes with just "The Beach Boys" and a number written right on the cassette with a black magic marker. No receipt for payment, no "thank you for shopping with us", no nothing. Arrived in a small, padded manilla envelope. Blown away!
In the old Beach Boys' Quarterly booklet/magazine, and this would've been circa 1986/87/88, I came in contact with a fellow BB fan (I do remember his name but won't disclose it) and actually started calling him long distance and talking for hours about The Beach Boys. And this was before toll free long distance calls. Anyway, this great fan simply asked me to mail him blank cassettes and he would tape all of his bootleg recordings on them. So, I sent him about a dozen 90 min. and 120 min. Maxell cassettes, and this wonderful guy sent back hours and hours of stuff I read about but never heard, and things I never knew existed. I eventually lost touch with this fan (it was way before the internet), but I often think of trying to contact him.
In the late 1980's/early 1990's I started to read Goldmine magazine and started attending some record shows in eastern/central Pennsylvania. They were fun. I already had a lot of the bootleg stuff, but then I started collecting 45s and picture sleeves.
Today, I have found a few sites on the internet where I can find digital bootlegs. Occasionally I will go on those.
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Post by Kapitan on May 18, 2019 14:43:33 GMT
Today, I have found a few sites on the internet where I can find digital bootlegs. Occasionally I will go on those.
On that topic, I have found that I go through and download from those sites FAR, FAR less than I did even five or ten years ago. I think the reason is, it used to feel like each exposure might be my one and only chance to find any particular album. Now it just feels like everything is always there and I can just stream it if I spend 15 seconds looking.
Plus I have to admit, I've got dozens of burned-to-CD or even still on the hard drive "albums" that I've probably listened to once ... if that. So I can't say I have a pressing desire to keep adding yet-another show. (I'm more interested in revisiting studio stuff. But concerts? Rarely.)
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on May 18, 2019 15:24:10 GMT
Today, I have found a few sites on the internet where I can find digital bootlegs. Occasionally I will go on those.
On that topic, I have found that I go through and download from those sites FAR, FAR less than I did even five or ten years ago. I think the reason is, it used to feel like each exposure might be my one and only chance to find any particular album. Now it just feels like everything is always there and I can just stream it if I spend 15 seconds looking.
Plus I have to admit, I've got dozens of burned-to-CD or even still on the hard drive "albums" that I've probably listened to once ... if that. So I can't say I have a pressing desire to keep adding yet-another show. (I'm more interested in revisiting studio stuff. But concerts? Rarely.)
Same here.
EDIT: I just wanted to add, that as much as The Beach Boys (BRI) can be criticized for the way they handled their back/unreleased catalogue, A LOT of stuff has come out through the years. First you had the bonus tracks on the two-fers, but now you have all of those Pet Sounds sessions, the Smile Sessions, the Endless Harmony and Hawthorne comps, the boxed sets, and the recent copyright protection releases. They've come a long way.
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Post by kds on May 20, 2019 12:36:50 GMT
When I first started really getting into music in the 1990s, my father and I would go to local record shows, and several dealers sold bootlegs. I remember by very first bootleg purchase was a VHS Queen compilation in 1993, featuring a 1982 concert from Japan as well as various other rare clips.
When I got into Floyd in the late 1990s, this new thing called the internet opened the doors to a world of Floyd boots. I found a website in Poland that sold CDR bootlegs pretty cheap, and I bought a ton.
As I've gotten older, and the time I have to listen to music went down, so did my interest in bootlegs. I still might buy a bootleg concert DVD every now and then (I needed to go into the bootleg market to get a decent C50 product).
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